Cats: an unpredictable creature

A photo of Tiggers
A photo of Tiggers

Meet the subject of this research - Tiggers, whom I have had the pleasure of “serving” for over 11 years. Tiggers has a wide assortment of toys that she likes to play with, and I’m looking to add a new one to her collection.

But it suddenly dawned on me: what determines how much she likes a toy? Does she even has a favorite type of toy? Or is it more about the placement of the toy or/and whether there are people around? There has never been any clear patterns I can see before.

So this is an attempt to explore Tiggers’ play preference by analyzing the amount of minutes she plays with a toy each day, along with the associated type of toy, location, hour of the day and whether there are people present.

First off: does she have a preference for any type of toys?

Let’s take a look at the distribution of Tigger’s playtime amongst each type of toy.

In detail, our household has a total of 14 toys, divided into five types:

A pie chart for total playtime by toy type Looking at the graph, we can see that we have a clear winner here, which are the mobile toys. You may look at this and thought: “Great, let’s get more mobile toys for her then!”

A cat playing with a ball toy But wait! Don’t forget there’s a whopping 9 toys accounting for this category! The other categories doesn’t seem that unpopular given their fewer variety. There’s no definite most favorite toy type here, however one thing is for sure: she doesn’t need more scratch post.

A cat jumping away from the scratch post
A cat jumping away from the scratch post

How about the location of the toy?

We were trying to look for a favorite type of toy but didn’t come up with any concrete answer. Maybe she just prefers to hang out in certain places?

Here’s a look into the distribution of playtime between the locations.

Graph for playtime by location Looks like she really likes to hang out in the living room. Seeing as the living room only has two toys, this is unlikely to be influenced by the sheer number of toys like the toy type. No wonder you can almost always find her napping at the living room couch!

But is that all?

Seeing how dominant Tiggers likes to spend time in the bedroom and living room got me to wondering if having people around to give her pets and belly rubs is what actually draws her there.

Here’s what her distribution of active playtime throughout the 24 hour in a day looks like when there are people present at each location vs when there are no one around:

Line graph for Tiggers playtime by hour of day and whether there are people present
Line graph for Tiggers playtime by hour of day and whether there are people present

It looks like when there are people around, she tends to be most active around 10pm. This matches the usual time when someone would come watch the TV in the living room, or when I still have the bedroom open for her to visit.

As for cases when no one is present, she is most active at 1am and around 2pm. Often at these time there’s either no one at home or we tend to stay in our respective room.

So it turns out she just prefers the living room and bedroom because she is more likely to get pets there.

Cat leaning on chair for attention If you are hanging around in an open space, she will come for you to demand attention. It comes naturally that she will also interact with toys more often there.

In conclusion

In the end, I supposed I don’t need to worry too much about what kind of toys to buy or where to place them. Tiggers is a simple creature - she likes naps and pets. But I supposed we all love these silly creatures for that :).

Tiggers napping in here bed
Tiggers napping in here bed